AWS Migration Incentives Guide 2026.
The definitive buyer-side guide to negotiating AWS migration funding — Migration Acceleration Program credits, MAP 2.0 structures, partner-led PIE, and the credit-stacking strategies that move a typical migration from break-even to net-positive in year one.
What's inside.
AWS will fund a meaningful portion of your migration — the question is how much, in what form, and on what terms. This 48-page white paper documents every AWS migration incentive available in 2026, the eligibility criteria most teams overlook, and the negotiation sequence that consistently produces 2x to 4x the credits AWS first offers. It is built on 500+ engagements and $2.4 billion in reviewed AWS spend, including dozens of migrations of >$5M annual run-rate workloads.
The Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) is the most visible AWS migration funding vehicle, but it is also the most poorly negotiated. Most customers accept the first MAP offer their account team presents. That offer is typically calibrated to the lower bound of the eligible range — sometimes by a factor of three. Account teams have wide latitude to increase MAP credits when the customer presents a credible alternative path (multi-cloud, on-prem extension, or delayed migration). The framework in this paper shows how to construct that credible alternative.
The 2026 edition incorporates MAP 2.0 mechanics released in late 2025, current partner-led PIE benchmarks, the interaction between migration credits and EDP commitment tiers, and the often-missed credits available for VMware Cloud on AWS, mainframe modernization, SAP migrations, and database modernization. Sample credit-request memos and benchmark credit percentages by workload size are included in the appendix.
Table of contents
- Executive summary — what AWS will fund, and what they will not
- Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) — mechanics, eligibility, and credit math
- MAP 2.0 — the 2025 program update and what changed
- Partner-led PIE — how partner funding stacks with MAP credits
- Mainframe, SAP, and VMware on AWS — specialized credit programs
- Database modernization credits — commercial-DB-to-Aurora incentives
- AI & ML migration funding — new 2026 credit programs
- Credit-EDP interaction — how migration credits affect EDP commitment
- Negotiation sequence — 4 stages from discovery to credit signature
- Appendix A — sample credit-request memo and benchmark percentages by workload
- Appendix B — common credit application pitfalls and how to avoid them
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Built on 500+ engagements.
Every figure, benchmark, and recommendation in this white paper is grounded in primary data from real AWS negotiation engagements. We have advised on more than $2.4 billion in AWS spend across 500+ engagements, spanning financial services, SaaS, media, retail, healthcare, public sector, and AI-native companies. The data set is anonymized and aggregated; no individual customer agreement is identifiable.
This white paper is buyer-side analysis. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or reviewed by Amazon Web Services. The recommendations reflect what works in negotiation against AWS's standard playbook, not AWS's preferred customer behavior. Where the two diverge, we have written from the customer's perspective.
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